My invention has to do with the game of golf. Golf has been played since the 15th century in Scotland. It was introduced in the United States in the 17th century and became an organized sport in the US in 1888. In early times, golf was played in the format known as match play, in which competitors sought to complete the play of each hole in fewer strokes than their opponents. In recent years, stroke or medal play has become common in professional and collegiate tournaments. In stroke or medal play, the object is to complete the designated number of holes in the least number of strokes.
Despite its immense popularity—golf is played by more than 26 million people in the United States alone—golf has never developed as a team sport. The game is played in many different formats, but there is no single, generally accepted, method of playing golf as a true team game or sport.
By ‘true team game or sport’ I mean to describe a game or sport in which 1) teams, consisting of more than two players each, compete against each other; 2) the teams compete in a discrete contest or competition, known as a game; 3) there is one accumulating score for each team, the winner being the team with the highest score at the end of the game; 4) the object of the game being that a team defeat an opposing team, the individual success or failure of individual players is not the measure of the winning or losing and consequently substitution of players in accordance with established rules, is permitted; 5) the efforts of the team are coordinated and directed by a coach, manager or captain who is responsible for strategic decision making before and during the game; 6) the players are aware, in substantially real time, of the status of the game, i.e., the current score and the amount of the game remaining to be played, so that their strategy in playing the game can be responsive to the game situation.
To some extent, the Ryder Cup® and Presidents Cup® competitions have approached the model of true team sports. Still, they are not played in a single, discrete game format, but instead are played over a period of several days using different formats each day.
Intercollegiate and interscholastic golf competition is generally conducted in stroke or medal play format which lacks both the cohesiveness and the challenge of match play competition. Moreover, college players typically compete in multi-school tournaments rather than in games against one other school.
Typically, golfers, both professional and amateurs, compete in tournaments rather than games. It is rare for more than a fraction of the players in a golf tournament to be in contention for the winner's prize. The rest of the field presents little spectacle for fans to watch or care much about. Golf enthusiasts are familiar with the structure known as the ‘Leaderboard’, a large display showing the progress of the ten or twelve players currently leading a golf tournament. Even there, I have found no evidence of electric leaderboards which might rival the animated and exciting scoreboards used in football, baseball, basketball, and hockey. This is partially because the identity of the leaders is subject to change. It is also true that most golf tournaments do not present the kind of fast action that lends itself to automated scoreboards.
To the extent that golf tournaments represent the prior art related to team golf competition, there are a number of shortcomings which my invention is intended to address. Unlike sports which are played in stadiums and arenas, golf is played on a golf course which may occupy 150 to 200 acres or more. The players are not within sight and sound of each other. Various means of keeping players informed of the status of the game are unsatisfactory. Often, even professional golfers engaged in major tournaments are only peripherally aware of the overall status of the event because of hearing crowd reactions on adjacent holes. An effective course-wide public address system is not only expensive; its intrusive noise would be disrupting to players. The same is true to a lesser degree of walkie-talkies. To maintain manually posted scoreboards all over a golf course would be very expensive.
While it is true that in major golf tournaments something approaching real time, overall score keeping is accomplished through telephonic and other electronic voice communication with the leaderboard, such labor intensive and costly score keeping is not available to amateur, recreational, high school, or even collegiate golfers.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,266,214 issued to Joseph Peters, Jr., describes a hand held game scoring apparatus, not unlike the Golfball® scorecard included in my invention. Peters, however, does not address the problem of communicating the current score of a golf game to the several participants who are scattered over the golf course. Moreover, the Peters device is multi-purpose, requires a certain amount of initial data input, (course information, handicaps, etc), and does not function either as a transmitter or receiver of information. Nor does it have as its primary purpose, the function of keeping players informed of the status of the game over the entire field of play.